What is the purpose of film?
For some, it is to entertain: to draw moviegoers with humor and sex, intrigue and violence. The meaning and meat of a film matters less than the money it draws. For others, films are meant to inform and transform: to convince watchers that some piece of knowledge should change their lives.
But for Austin-based filmmaker Laura Dunn, filmmaking is primarily about telling a story. And while stories can transform, convict, and entertain, none of these things matter to her as much as being true to the story itself.
Dunn made her first film when she was an undergraduate at Yale University. She used to tackle film projects as an activist, she said in an interview, with an aim to change people’s way of thinking. “That’s when I was 19, and I’m 40 now,” she says. “I see things differently. I definitely make films to connect with people, to bring light to things that need to be seen and heard—but I don’t set out self-righteously to change people. …You want to represent people who are good, kind, and generous to trust you with their stories. You want to do that respectfully.”
And that is precisely what she has done with
The Seer, a new documentary about writer Wendell Berry, set to be released at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival on Saturday. The film is co-produced and directed with her husband, Jef Sewell, and backed by executive producers Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, as well as several co-producers including Nick Offerman (fondly known as Ron Swanson on the TV comedy series “Parks and Rec”).
Berry is a Kentucky-born farmer and philosopher, essayist and poet, environmental activist and localist. He’s written fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. Those familiar with Berry’s work know that he is an outspoken advocate for “flyover country”—for towns and communities, farmers and farms neglected or even maltreated by modern politics and culture. His nonfiction work lauds a loyalty to place, to family, and to community that we’ve largely forgotten. His poetry exudes a reverence for the created world, for the glory of quotidian rituals and objects. His novels combine both these things in characters that love their towns and land. Through this immense body of work, Berry has appealed to a wide range of readers, transcending political and personal biases.
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While Dunn’s film could have focused on the man and his accomplishments, The Seer does something quite different. It looks at Berry’s community in Henry County, Kentucky—and thus gives us a glimpse through Berry’s own lens, helping us see the heart of Wendell Berry by showing us what he loves: the people and place he has devoted himself to.
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But The Seer primarily focuses on a series of inhabitants from Berry’s own Henry County, Kentucky. The film is a tribute to farmers—their hard work, love of land, and traditional values. It’s a memoir to a sort of farming that’s dwindling and dying out, as industrialized agriculture takes its place. And it’s a collection of Berry’s own calls to halt such “progress,” to ponder the dangers of our ways, to preserve the old ways and the beauty of their rhythms.
“The farm is a beautiful way of understanding relationship of ourselves to land, to each other, to God,” Dunn says. “Wendell doesn’t just isolate an environmental issue—he helps us see how interconnected these pieces are, helps us see what our culture denigrates, at such high cost to our families.”
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Wendell Berry decided that returning home and caring for his place mattered more than prestige and urban splendor; and it would seem that he’s been blessed for this decision. While he’s not a household name, recognition of his work is steadily growing. The unforeseen consequences of our agricultural and cultural developments that he warned about in the 1970s are becoming widely recognized and worried over today. Yet he’s refused to embrace a party or public movement, choosing instead to walk his own path. This means he’s angered people on both left and right—but it’s also enabled him to bridge ideological barriers and appeal to a large set of people. He’s tapped into a yearning that lies in the heart of so many: a love of home, of place, of traditions that are worth preserving and communities that are worth celebrating. We don’t want to lose these things, and Berry helps explain why.
The Seer perfectly embodies that message, entreating us not to forget or step away from our homes and our communities, but rather to restore and love them—to “look and see.” This, if any, is the transformative message that Dunn brings to her film. It’s a piece that she hopes might urge watchers “to turn away from the film, and turn into their own lives … to turn the television off and go outside.”
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